[ExI] The void left by deleting religion

[Eliezer S. Yudkowsky]

Samantha Atkins wrote:
> On May 3, 2007, at 9:32 PM, spike wrote:
> 
>> Fred, something I left out of my post is that religion for me was
>> an extremely positive experience.  I cannot even think of a
>> negative part of it.  The family aspects of religion, my friends,
>> the music, the scholarly aspects, all of it was good to me, more
>> positive for me than for anyone else I know.  I loved my church
>> and my church life.  My friends and acquaintances were absolutely
>> astounded that I could ever give it up, thought I had gone 
>> insane.  I had gone sane however.  I had no choice: I realized I
>>  could not control what I believe, and I no longer believed the
>> doctrine to be true. True matters more than happy.
> 
> I know very much what that is like.   It was very difficult for me
> to let go of my religious life.   But try as I might, and I tried
> mighty hard, I couldn't make it out to be true.   I also could not
> abide the places of blindness within my religious community to much
> outside of importance and value.
> 
>> So, into the old bit bucket with it, all of it.  I miss it to
>> this day I confess.
> 
> There are considerable parts that I miss too.

Samantha, Spike, what do you miss?

Fools try to build "rational religions" but because they are just 
blindly imitating religion, they only invent sad little mockeries; 
hymns to the nonexistence of God.  You have to start by accepting 
"That which can be destroyed by the truth should be" as a 
non-negotiable requirement, and then consider the desires that 
religion grew up organically to satisfy.  You have to create a vision 
of what humanity would have been if we had never made the mistake of 
religion in the first place, never believed in anything supernatural, 
never departed the way of rationality, but had still had the same 
desires and grown up other organic institutions to fulfill them.

The humanity that never made the mistake would write hymns, when they 
saw something worth writing a hymn to; but it wouldn't be a hymn to 
the nonexistence of God, because they wouldn't have the idea of God in 
the first place.  Would this world still have marriages and funeral 
ceremonies?  Yes, but they would be different marriages and funeral 
ceremonies.  They certainly would not be performed "in the name of 
Bayes" because nobody wants to hear about bloody probability theory 
while they're trying to get married - that's an example of the blind 
imitation that usually gets done by fools who set out to invent 
"rational replacements for religion".  But even human beings who don't 
have heads stuffed full of blatant nonsense will still want to 
celebrate marriages.  They just won't invoke invisible sky wizards to 
seal the deal.  Even a rationalist still feels a need to find 
something to say when a friend or family member dies.  It just won't 
be false comfort.

If you have a need that can be satisfied without believing in false 
propositions, maybe we can get it back for you, one of these days.  If 
it was satisfied by a church in the old days, it may take a while to 
construct the community, though.

What I miss most myself is comfort, the reassurance that there's a 
higher power watching over you and that everything will turn out all 
right.  But I know I can never have *that* back this side of the dawn, 
and maybe not even then.  That feeling of comfort falls directly under 
the non-negotiable prescription:  That which can be destroyed by the 
truth should be.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence